’)
Falsely claiming that abortions are paid for in the health care bill, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert waved a copy of the bill at the few who showed up at a tea party rally, yelling, “I brought an abortion to show you today,” and “There’s a whole lot of demons going on.” (via Think Progress)
In fact, the bill goes out of its way to separate abortion coverage from other medical needs.
If the carrier chooses to provide abortion coverage, “the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to any of the following for purposes of paying for [abortion] services,” the bill says, before barring insurers from using government premium credits and cost sharing reductions to finance abortion coverage.
Furthermore, the bill requires insurers to “collect from each enrollee in the plan (without regard to the enrollee’s age, sex, or family status) a separate payment” for abortion services and deposit the payments into separate “allocation” account. “The issuer of the plan shall deposit…all payments described in subparagraph (B)(i)(I) into a separate account that consists solely of such payments and that is used exclusively to pay for services other than services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i).”
